Greg Valentine was recently a guest on The Hannibal TV, and while he discussed a number of different things, he also discussed the Dog Collar match that he and Roddy Piper participated in at the very first Starcade.
When asked about the match, Valentine discussed how great of a babyface and a heel Piper was, and how it was initially his idea to have the match. “I was the U.S. Champ, and I battled Roddy for a long time up to that, and Roddy was a great babyface, but in my opinion a better heel,” he said. “We wrestled each other a long, long time, and he told me about this thing he wanted to do with this dog collar. And he presented it to Jimmy Crockett and George Scott, I believe, and they went for it.”
From there, Valentine describes the behind-the-scenes action of the match, and how he and Piper did very little in the way of planning what would happen. “We talked about the dog collar match about ten minutes before we went out to do it, and that’s why it looks so real. We didn’t sit there and talk about what we were going to do, we just ad-libbed it,” he said. “We had an ending, at the end Roddy was going to get his duke raised, it was a U.S. title match, but it was non-title, but we just made it a real gruesome match. Piper had some little tricks that he told me that we could do with it, like stretching it out.”
Needless to say, whatever they discussed prior to that match was good, as the match has gone down as one of the most well-known wrestling matches in history, and one of Piper’s best matches overall.
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